Fire this morning gutted the Great West Clothing Store with a loss of
$8,000.00 of which $4,000.00 is covered by insurance in the Occidental.
Frank Beecher, proprietor of the store, was overcome by smoke, and is
in the city hospital.

Smoke was first seen issuing from the back of the store by Fred Grant,
a delivery man for the Imperial Laundry, who turned in an alarm at
10.08. Owing to the fire team colliding with a dray owned by Sheppard
& Co. some minutes of delay occurred. During this period the building,
which was of frame, burned fiercely. It was almost completely
destroyed, although some of the stock may be salable.

Beecher rushed into the back room for certain papers, where he was
found by Fireman Carey in an unconscious condition. He is recovering,
and is already planning to rebuild.

Dave read the account with a sinking heart. By the time he reached the
end it seemed his heart could sink no further. He found that the
editor had not left the office, so he approached him with as much
spirit as he could command.

"I guess you won't need me any more," he said. "I'm sorry I made a
mess of that fire story."

There was a kind twinkle in the chief's eye as he answered, "Nonsense.
Of course we need you. You have merely made the mistake every one else
makes, in supposing you could write for a newspaper without training.
We will give you the training--and pay you while you learn. The only
man we can't use is the man who won't learn. Now let me give you a few
pointers," and the editor got up from his desk and held the paper with
the fire story before him. "In the first place, don't start a story
with 'the,' at least, not more than once or twice a week. In the
second place, get the meat into the first paragraph. Seventy-five per
cent. of the readers never go further than the first paragraph; give
them the raw facts there; if they want the trimmings they will go down
for them. That is where a magazine story is exactly opposite to a
newspaper story; a newspaper story shows its hand in the first
paragraph, a magazine story in the last.

"Then, get the facts. Nobody cares whether the fire bell rang or not,
but they do care about the man who was suffocated; who he was, what he
was doing there, what became of him. Revel in names. Get the names of
everybody, and get them right. The closest tight-wad in the town will
buy a paper if it has his name in it. Every story, no matter how
short, is good f